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Westphalia
The Republic of Westphalia (German: Republik Westfalen), usually called Westphalia, was a country that existed in central Europe between 1946 and 1968. Formed in the aftermath of World War II from the American sector of occupied Germany, Westphalia was ruled as an authoritarian state by Erich von Manstein, and later Reinhard Gehlen, until it merged with the Palatinate in 1971 to form the German Federation. History Origins In August 1945, near the end of World War II, the leaders of the major Allied nations met in Cairo to discuss plans for administering the territory of a defeated Nazi Germany. Dividing the country into separate postwar occupation zones, the administration of U.S. President Bob Taft agreed to occupy most of northwestern Germany, encompassing the regions of Westphalia and Lower Saxony. In November of 1945, the last German forces surrendered to the Allies, ending the war in Europe. The staunchly isolationist President Taft intended to withdraw all American troops from Germany at the soonest practical hour so as to minimize U.S. involvement in European affairs. The British and French governments refused to take over the American zone, and so even as efforts began to rebuild the region's shattered cities, a successor government was hastily being organized. In October 1946, the Republic of Westphalia was declared, with its capital in the southwestern city of Dusseldorf, and with former Erich Manstein installed as President and Eugen Gerstenmaier as Vice President. Early Years Immediately after the country's establishment, Westphalian authorities had to contend with the brutal winter of 1946 and 1947. Cold weather and snow severely hindered agricultural production throughout Western Europe, and Westphalian Secretary of the Treasury Hjalmar Schacht was forced to use funds from the country's small treasury and limited supplies of foreign currency to purchase food from its European neighbors and keep the people fed. By the end of winter, however, the crisis had subsided, and by the late 1940s, life in Westphalia had largely settled into a pattern of general poverty, underpinned by hostility from neighboring countries, permeated by militarism and authoritarianism (bolstered by an extensive and efficient secret police structure headed by Michael Canaris), and characterized by frequent incursions by the nation's autocratic leadership upon the country's fragile democratic institutions. Westphalia was excluded from the Amsterdam Pact due to French suspicions of its arguable status as a successor state to the Nazi Germany. Manstein's government was not outwardly aggressive, but the fact that the government was controlled by remnants of the Third Reich gave no assurance to rest of the world that Westphalia had moved past its Nazi roots. Its principal ally (on paper, at least) was the United States, but the American government had little interest in Westphalia under the isolationism of President Taft, mostly leaving the German state to its own devices. Nazi domination of the Westphalian government led to the rise of an underground Jewish terrorist group led by Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin; this organization grew into a significant concern for the government, assassinating several high-profile figures including Hermann Goering, the former Luftwaffe chief who had been under house arrest since the end of World War II. Reinhard Gehlen and Martial Law In 1950, President Manstein (threatened both by Jewish terrorism and the chance that opposition figure Konrad Adenauer would win the Presidency) invoked his constitutional powers to suspend the 1950 general election until 1952, and to declare martial law until such time that the military could restore law and order. On June 6, 1950 hile Manstein was making a public announcement of his decision in Oldenburg, he was assassinated by a time bomb planted by Dayan's and Rabin's terrorist group. The bomb killed off Manstein, his Vice President, and most of the central government, leaving only Reinhard Gehlen, Manstein's attorney general, with a credible claim to the presidency. Gehlen was hurriedly sworn in as President, ordered that the 1950 elections be postponed until 1952, and began an immediate clampdown on Jewish groups in Westphalia. While Gehlen would have preferred to solve the terrorist problem by expelling all Jews from Westphalia, he dreaded backlash from the rest of Western Europe and his own people, prompting him to instead embark on a campaign of political repression. Gehlen ordered the Internal Police to begin rounding up the leaders of Jewish activist groups and forcing them into exile or house arrest; few of these men had any ties whatsoever to Dayan's and Rabin's organization, and most had never conspired against the state in any way, but they were targeted nevertheless. In addition to Jews, the state began going after non-Jewish political opponents: radicals and Communists were persecuted in the same way as suspected terrorists, and even moderate opposition figures like Konrad Adenauer came under the watchful eye of the Internal Police. Within a year, Gehlen had succeeded in bringing a level of security to the country that Manstein could not create in nearly four years in office.